US oil supplies are at a 13½ year low, but oil exports are at a 8 month high; SPR at a 19½ year low after biggest draw since August 2011; gasoline exports are at a 39 month high; distillate supplies are at a 95 month low; total oil + products supplies also at a 95 month low after across the board drawdowns; DUCs are lowest on record; 4.7 month DUC backlog is lowest in 7 years
oil prices rose this week for the first time in three weeks after a major Russian and Kazakh export pipeline was shut down while Saudi oil facilities were coming under increasing missile attacks...after falling 4.2% $104.70 a barrel last week as China locked down its financial and industrial hubs to control a new Covid outbreak, and as hedge funds reversed their earlier bullish oil bets ahead of a Fed interest rate hike, the contract price for US light sweet crude for April delivery opened higher and jumped $3 early Monday after a Houthi attack on a Saudi facility caused a temporary drop in output at an Aramco refinery and after weekend talks between Ukraine and Russia showed little signs of progress, and then rallied another 4% to settle $7.42 higher at $112.12 a barrel as European Union nations considered joining the US in an embargo of Russian oil...prices rose sharply again early Tuesday on escalating jitters over supply shortages due to the attack on Saudi facilities, coupled with EU talk of an embargo on Russian oil exports, but reversed to settled 36 cents lower at $111.76 a barrel after reports emerged that European Union foreign ministers were split on whether to join the US in banning Russian oil, as trading of the April oil contract expired... with the media now quoting the contract price for US light sweet crude for May delivery, which had been trading 2% lower than April oil and had settled Tuesday down 70 cents at 109.27 a barrel, that new lower oil price jumped in early Wednesday trading, as Russian and Kazakh crude exports via the CPC pipeline to the Black Sea coast were fully halted, raising fears that Moscow would interrupt energy supplies just as Biden arrived in Europe to press for military escalation against them, and then extended those gains after the EIA reported crude oil and fuel stockpiles fell last week as demand jumped to settle $5.66 cents higher at $114.93 a barrel...oil prices stalled while nearing 14-year highs in mixed trading early Thursday, as traders assessed the implications of the disruption of the Caspian Pipeline, which could remove up to 1 million bpd of crude oil from an increasingly tightened global market, but tumbled in afternoon trading to close $2.59 lower at $112.34 a barrel, after the EU failed to agree on a plan to boycott Russian oil, and on reports that exports from Kazakhstan's Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal might partially resume...oil prices tumbled more than 3% early Friday in reaction to reports suggesting the Caspian Pipeline partially resumed operations at the Black Sea terminal after an inspection revealed limited damage to the loading infrastructure, easing concern that a prolonged disruption of Kazakhstan oil exports would exacerbate a shortfall of available supplies on the global oil market, but then flipped higher after reports of a big fire at the facilities of state-owned Aramco in the Saudi city of Jeddah, following a missile attack claimed by the Houthi rebels, and settled with a $1.56 gain at $13.90 a barrel, thus finishing $9.20 or 8.8% higher for the week, while the May oil contract itself, which had finished last week priced at $103.09 a barrel, logged a 10.5% gain...
natural gas prices also finished higher for the 5th time in six weeks, as forecasts turned cooler and demand from Europe increased....after rising 2.9% to $4.863 per mmBTU last week as near record LNG exports offset the bearish impact of rapidly receding winter weather, the contract price of natural gas for April delivery trended lower much of Monday as gas production increased and forecasts showed light weather-driven demand across most of the Lower 48, but moved higher in late trading to log a 3.7 cent gain at $4.900 per mmBTU, as traders focused more on spiking oil prices than on higher gas output and forecasts for milder weather....natural gas prices then jumped 6% on Tuesday on a shift to cooler weather forecasts and on record demand for US LNG exports and settled 28.7 cents higher at $5.187 per mmBTU, even as European natural gas prices were still six times higher than those in the US....prices inched up another 4.5 cents to a seven week high at $5.232 per mmBTU on Wednesday as forecasts for cooler weather and higher heating demand over the next two weeks continued to firm, and then continued to surge on Thursday even though natural gas in storage dropped by less than was expected in what might have been the final draw of the heating season to settle 16.9 cents higher at $5.401 per mmBTU....natural gas prices spurted 17.0 cents or 3% more to an 8 week high of $5.71 per mmBTU on Friday, after the Biden administration and EU leaders announced a deal to send an additional 15 billion cubic meters of LNG to EU countries in 2022 – about 1.5 Bcf/d — with “expected increases going forward,”....with natural gas prices thus rising every day this week, they thus closed 14.6% higher on Friday than their prior week's close, the biggest jump since January....
The EIA's natural gas storage report for the week ending March 18th indicated that the amount of working natural gas held in underground storage in the US fell by 51 billion cubic feet to 1,389 billion cubic feet by the end of the week, which left our gas supplies 366 billion cubic feet, or 20.9% below the 1,755 billion cubic feet that were in storage on March 18th of last year, and 293 billion cubic feet, or 17.4% below the five-year average of 1,682 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been in storage as of the 18th of March over the most recent five years....the 51 billion cubic foot withdrawal from US natural gas working storage for the cited week was less than the average forecast for a 62 billion cubic foot withdrawal as expected by an S&P Global Platts survey of analysts, and it was also equally less than the average withdrawal of 62 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have typically been pulled out natural gas storage during the same week over the past 5 years, but it was still more than the 29 billion cubic feet that were pulled from natural gas storage during the corresponding week of 2021...
The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA
US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending March 18th indicated that after a second straight big increase in our oil exports, we had to pull oil out of our stored commercial crude supplies for the twelfth time in 17 weeks and for the 28th time in the past forty-two weeks, despite another big increase to oil supply that could not be accounted for…our imports of crude oil rose by an average of 92,000 barrels per day to an average of 6,486,000 barrels per day, after rising by an average of 76,000 barrels per day during the prior week, while our exports of crude oil rose by an average of 908,000 barrels per day to an 8 month high of 3,844,000 barrels per day during the week, after our exports had risen 514,000 barrels per day the prior week...applying our oil exports to offset our oil supplies coming from imports, that meant that our effective trade in oil worked out to a net import average of 2,642,000 barrels of per day during the week ending March 18th, 816,000 fewer barrels per day than the net of our imports minus our exports during the prior week…over the same period, production of crude oil from US wells was reportedly unchanged at 11,600,000 barrels per day, and hence our daily supply of oil from the net of our international trade in oil and from domestic well production appears to have totaled an average of 14,242,000 barrels per day during the cited reporting week…
Meanwhile, US oil refineries reported they were processing an average of 15,878,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending March 18th, an average of 276,000 more barrels per day than the amount of oil than our refineries processed during the prior week, while over the same period the EIA’s surveys indicated that a net of 957,000 barrels of oil per day were being pulled out of the supplies of oil stored in the US….so based on that reported & estimated data, this week’s crude oil figures from the EIA appear to indicate that our total working supply of oil from storage, from net imports and from oilfield production was 678,000 barrels per day less than what our oil refineries reported they used during the week…to account for that disparity between the apparent supply of oil and the apparent disposition of it, the EIA just inserted a (+678,000) barrel per day figure onto line 13 of the weekly U.S. Petroleum Balance Sheet in order to make the reported data for the daily supply of oil and for the consumption of it balance out, essentially a balance sheet fudge factor that they label in their footnotes as “unaccounted for crude oil”, thus suggesting there must have been a error or omission of that magnitude in this week’s oil supply & demand figures that we have just transcribed....however, since most everyone treats these weekly EIA reports as gospel and since these figures often drive oil pricing, and hence decisions to drill or complete oil wells, we’ll continue to report this data just as it's published, and just as it's watched & believed to be reasonably accurate by most everyone in the industry...(for more on how this weekly oil data is gathered, and the possible reasons for that “unaccounted for” oil, see this EIA explainer)….
This week's 957,000 barrel per day decrease in our overall crude oil inventories left our total oil supplies at 984,722,000 barrels at the end of the week, the lowest since September 26th, 2008, or virtually a 13 1/2 year low...this week's oil inventory decrease came as 358,000 barrels per day were being pulled our commercially available stocks of crude oil, while 599,000 barrels per day of oil were being pulled out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which appears to include the first withdrawal under the recently announced 30,000,000 million barrel release from the SPR to address Russian related shortfalls, as well as an ongoing withdrawal under the administration's earlier plan to release 50 million barrels from the SPR to incentivize US gasoline consumption....including other withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve under similar recent programs, a total of 84,824,000 barrels have now been removed from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the past 20 months, and as a result the 571,323,000 barrels of oil remaining in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now the lowest since May 31st, 2002, or at a new 19 1/2 year low, as repeated tapping of our emergency supplies for non-emergencies has already drained those supplies considerably over the past dozen years....based on an estimated average daily oil consumption of 18,000,000 barrels per day, the US will have roughly 28 1/2 days of oil supply left in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after the current SPR withdrawal programs have run their course...
Further details from the weekly Petroleum Status Report (pdf) indicate that the 4 week average of our oil imports slipped to an average of 6,242,000 barrels per day last week, which was still 9.1% more than the 5,723,000 barrel per day average that we were importing over the same four-week period last year….this week’s crude oil production was reported to be unchanged at 11,600,000 barrels per day as the EIA's rounded estimate of the output from wells in the lower 48 states was unchanged at 11,200,000 barrels per day, while Alaska’s oil production fell by 10,000 barrels per day to 431,000 barrels per day but had no impact on the rounded national total....US crude oil production had reached a pre-pandemic high of 13,100,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 13th 2020, so this week’s reported oil production figure was 11.5% below that of our pre-pandemic production peak, but 37.6% above the interim low of 8,428,000 barrels per day that US oil production had fallen to during the last week of June of 2016...
US oil refineries were operating at 91.1% of their capacity while using those 15,878,000 barrels of crude per day during the week ending March 18th, up from a utilization rate of 90.4% the prior week, and ia bit higher than the historical utilization rate for mid March refinery operations, when the need for seasonal maintenance typically causes rotating shutdowns…the 15,878,000 barrels per day of oil that were refined this week were 10.3% more barrels than the 14,389,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during week ending March 19th of 2021, when refineries were still recovering from winter storm Uri, and fractionally more than the 15,838,000 barrels of crude that were being processed daily during the week ending March 20th, 2020, when US refineries were operating at what was then a lower than normal 87.3% of capacity at the onset of the pandemic...
With the increase in the amount of oil being refined this week, gasoline output from our refineries was also higher, increasing by 424,000 barrels per day to 9,804,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 18th, after our gasoline output had decreased by 197,000 barrels per day over the prior week.…this week’s gasoline production was 14.3% more than the 8,577,000 barrels of gasoline that were being produced daily over the same week of last year, but 1.7% less than the gasoline production of 9,974,000 barrels per day during the week ending March 13th, 2020, after which gasoline production began to fall in response to the onset of pandemic impacts....meanwhile, our refineries’ production of distillate fuels (diesel fuel and heat oil) increased by 24,000 barrels per day to 4,979,000 barrels per day, after our distillates output had increased by 305,000 barrels per day over the prior week…with those increases, our distillates output was 8.2% more than the 4,601,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the storm impacted week ending March 19th of 2021, and 2.1% more than the 4,838,000 barrels of distillates that were being produced daily during the week ending March 20th, 2020...
Even with the big increase in our gasoline production, our supplies of gasoline in storage at the end of the week fell for the seventh consecutive week, decreasing by 2,948,000 barrels to 238,043,000 barrels during the week ending March 18th, after our gasoline inventories had decreased by 3,615,000 barrels over the prior week....our gasoline supplies decreased again this week even though the amount of gasoline supplied to US users decreased by 307,000 barrels per day to 8,637,000 barrels per day, and even as our imports of gasoline rose by 190,000 barrels per day to 721,000 barrels per day, because our exports of gasoline rose by 378,000 barrels per day to a 39 month high of 1,058,000 barrels per day.…but even after 7 straight inventory drawdowns, our gasoline supplies were still 2.5% higher than last March 19th's gasoline inventories of 232,297,000 barrels, when shortages in the wake of Winter Storm Uri had resulted in back to back record draws, while they're slightly below the five year average of our gasoline supplies for this time of the year…
Meanwhile, with this week's modest increase in our distillates production, our supplies of distillate fuels decreased for the ninth time in ten weeks and for the 21st time in twenty-nine weeks, falling by 2,071,000 barrels to a 95 month low of 112,135,000 barrels during the week ending March 18th, after our distillates supplies had increased by 332,000 barrels during the prior week…our distillates supplies fell this week because the amount of distillates supplied to US markets, an indicator of our domestic demand, jumped by 812,000 barrels per day to 4,516,000 barrels per day, and because our imports of distillates fell by 50,000 barrels per day to 172,000 barrels per day, while our exports of distillates fell by 484,000 barrels per day to 931,000 barrels per day....after thirty-five inventory decreases over the past fifty weeks, our distillate supplies at the end of the week were 20.8% below the 137,747,000 barrels of distillates that we had in storage on March 19th of 2021, and about 17% below the five year average of distillates inventories for this time of the year…
Meanwhile, after the big jump in our oil exports, our commercial supplies of crude oil in storage fell for the 21st time in 33 weeks and for the 36th time in the past year, decreasing by 2,5008,000 barrels over the week, from 415,907,000 barrels on March 11th to 413,399,000 barrels on March 18th, after our commercial crude supplies had increased by 4,345,000 barrels over the prior week…with this week’s decrease, our commercial crude oil inventories slipped to roughly 13% below the most recent five-year average of crude oil supplies for this time of year, but were still 29.4%% above the average of our crude oil stocks as of the third weekend of March over the 5 years at the beginning of the past decade, with the disparity between those comparisons arising because it wasn’t until early 2015 that our oil inventories first topped 400 million barrels....since our crude oil inventories had jumped to record highs during the Covid lockdowns of spring 2020 and jumped again after last year's winter storm Uri froze off Gulf Coast refining, our commercial crude oil supplies as of this March 11th were 17.8% less than the 502,711,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on March 19th of 2021, and were also 9.2% less than the 455,360,000 barrels of oil that we had in storage on March 20th of 2020, and 6.5% less than the 442,283,000 barrels of oil we had in commercial storage on March 22nd of 2019…
Finally, with our inventory of crude oil and our supplies of all products made from oil remaining near multi year lows, we are continuing to keep track of the total of all U.S. Stocks of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, including those in the SPR....the EIA's data shows that the total of our oil and oil product inventories, including those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and those held by the oil industry, and thus including everything from gasoline and jet fuel to propane/propylene and residual fuel oil, fell by 10,889,000 barrels this week, from 1,719,027,000 barrels on March 11th to 1,708,138,000 barrels on March 18th, after our total supply had decreased by 5,567,000 barrels over the prior week, and are now down by 80,295,000 barrels so far this year...that left our total supplies of oil & its products now at the lowest since April 4th, 2014, or at a new 95 month low, after this week's across the board drawdown in crude and product inventories..
This Week's Rig Count
The number of drilling rigs running in the US rose for the 66th time over the prior 78 weeks during the week ending March 25th, but it still remained 15.5% below the prepandemic rig count....Baker Hughes reported that the total count of rotary rigs drilling in the US increased by seven to 670 rigs this past week, which was also 253 more rigs than the pandemic hit 417 rigs that were in use as of the March 26th report of 2021, but was still 1,259 fewer rigs than the shale era high of 1,929 drilling rigs that were deployed on November 21st of 2014, a week before OPEC began to flood the global market with oil in an attempt to put US shale out of business….
The number of rigs drilling for oil was up by 7 to 531 oil rigs during this week, after rigs targeting oil had decreased by 3 during the prior week, and there are now 207 more oil rigs active now than were running a year ago, even as they still amount to just 33.0% of the shale era high of 1609 rigs that were drilling for oil on October 10th, 2014, and as they are still down 22.3% from the prepandemic oil rig count….meanwhile, the number of drilling rigs targeting natural gas bearing formations was unchanged at 137 natural gas rigs, while they were still up by 45 natural gas rigs from the 92 natural gas rigs that were drilling during the same week a year ago, and while they were still only 8.5% of the modern high of 1,606 rigs targeting natural gas that were deployed on September 7th, 2008…in addition to rigs targeting oil and gas, Baker Hughes lists two active "miscellaneous" rigs; one is a rig drilling vertically for a well intended to store CO2 emissions in Mercer county North Dakota, and the other is also a vertical rig, drilling 5,000 to 10,000 feet into a formation in Humboldt county Nevada that Baker Hughes doesn't track...the "miscellaneous" directional rig that had been set up to target the Marcellus shale in Schuyler County, New York last week appears to have already been shut down this week...
The offshore rig count in the Gulf of Mexico was up by two to fourteen rigs this week, with thirteen of this week's Gulf rigs drilling for oil in Louisiana waters and another rig drilling for oil in Alaminos Canyon, offshore from Texas....that's two more than the 12 offshore rigs that were active in the Gulf a year ago, when 10 Gulf rigs were drilling for oil offshore from Louisiana and two were deployed for oil in Texas waters…since there is not any drilling off our other coasts at this time, nor was there a year ago, those Gulf of Mexico rig counts are equal to the national offshore totals for both years....
In addition to those rigs offshore, we continue to have 3 water based rigs drilling inland again this week; one is a horizontal rig targeting oil at a depth of between 5000 and 10,000 feet, drilling from inland waters in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi, another is a directional rig drilling for oil at a depth of over 15,000 feet in the Galveston Bay area, while the third inland waters rig is a directional rig targeting oil at a depth of between 10,000 and 15,000 feet in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana...during the same week of a year ago, there were no inland waters rigs deployed..
The count of active horizontal drilling rigs was up by 4 to 610 horizontal rigs this week, which was also 230 more rigs than the 380 horizontal rigs that were in use in the US on March 26th of last year, but still 55.6% less than the record 1,374 horizontal rigs that were drilling on November 21st of 2014...at the same time, the vertical rig count was also up by four rigs to 25 vertical rigs this week, and those were also up by 3 from the 22 vertical rigs that were operating during the same week a year ago….on the other hand, the directional rig count was down by one to 35 directional rigs this week, while those were still up by 20 from the 15 directional rig that were in use on March 26th of 2021….
The details on this week’s changes in drilling activity by state and by major shale basin are shown in our screenshot below of that part of the rig count summary pdf from Baker Hughes that gives us those changes…the first table below shows weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major oil & gas producing states, and the table below that shows the weekly and year over year rig count changes for the major US geological oil and gas basins…in both tables, the first column shows the active rig count as of March 25th, the second column shows the change in the number of working rigs between last week’s count (March 18th) and this week’s (March 25th) count, the third column shows last week’s March 18th active rig count, the 4th column shows the change between the number of rigs running on Friday and the number running on the Friday before the same weekend of a year ago, and the 5th column shows the number of rigs that were drilling at the end of that reporting week a year ago, which in this week’s case was the 26th of March, 2021...
With the six rig increase in Texas and the three rig increase in the Permian basin, we'll start by checking the Rigs by State file at Baker Hughes for the Texas changes in that basin...there we find that four rigs were added in Texas Oil District 8, which encompasses the core Permian Delaware, and that another new rig was set up in Texas Oil District 7C, which includes those Texas counties in the southern part of the Permian Midland, but that a rig was pulled out of Texas Oil District 8A, which includes the counties of the northern part of the Permian Midland, at the same time...since the Texas Permian thus shows a net four rig increase while the national Permian basin count was up by three, we have to figure that the rig that was pulled out of New Mexico this week had been drilling in the far western Permian Delaware, in the southeast corner of that state, for the national Permian total to balance...
elsewhere in Texas, we find that a rig was added Texas Oil District 1, another rig was added in Texas Oil District 3, and another rig was added in Texas Oil District 4; any one of those three could have accounted for the rig added in the Eagle Ford shale, which stretches in a narrow band through the southeast quadrant of that state...finally, Texas also saw a rig pulled out of Texas Oil District 10, or the panhandle region...since that was probably a Granite Wash rig, and since the Granite Wash basin count was up by one rig, that strongly suggests that two rigs were added in the portion of the Granite Wash basin that lies in Oklahoma, to the east of the Texas panhandle...that would still leave two Oklahoma rigs unaccounted for by Baker Hughes, since all four of the rigs removed from the Cana Woodford necessarily had been drilling in the center of that state...
Among the other states showing changes this week, the two rig increase in Louisiana was due to the two new oil rigs set up to drill in the state's offshore Gulf of Mexico waters, and North Dakota had a rig added in the Williston shale, while a North Slope oil rig, not tracked by Baker Hughes, was pulled out of Alaska...meanwhile, while we know there was an oil rig added in the Haynesville shale, there is no indication of a change in either northern Louisiana or Texas Oil District 6, where the Haynesville shale is located....that could have only have happened if a rig in the same region that was not targeting the Haynesville had been pulled out at the same time, which would be unusual but not uncommon...note, for instance, that the Marcellus shale shows no change despite the addition of a natural gas rig in the Pennsylvania Marcellus because that PA rig was offset by the removal of the "miscellaneous" Marcellus rig, targeting neither oil nor gas, from Schuyler County, New York at the same time....the natural gas rig count change was then reduced to zero nationally because a natural gas rig was pulled out of Ohio's Utica shale at the same time...
DUC well report for February
Last week saw the release of the EIA's Drilling Productivity Report for March, which included the EIA's February data on drilled but uncompleted (DUC) oil and gas wells in the 7 most productive shale regions (under the report's tab 3)....that data showed a decrease in uncompleted wells nationally for the 21st consecutive month in February, as both completions of drilled wells and drilling of new wells increased in February, but remained well below average pre-pandemic levels...for the 7 sedimentary regions covered by this report, the total count of DUC wells decreased by 156 wells, falling from 4,528 DUC wells in January to 4,372 DUC wells in February, which was the lowest number of US wells left uncompleted on record, and also 40.0% fewer DUCs than the 7,295 wells that had been drilled but remained uncompleted as of the end of February of a year ago...this month's DUC decrease occurred as 775 wells were drilled in the 7 regions that this report covers (representing 87% of all U.S. onshore drilling operations) during February, up from the 728 wells that were drilled in January, while 931 wells were completed and brought into production by fracking them, up by 20 from the 911 well completions seen in January, and up by 387 from the winter storm impacted 544 completions seen in February of last year....at the February completion rate, the 4,372 drilled but uncompleted wells left at the end of the month represents a 4.7 month backlog of wells that have been drilled but are not yet fracked, down from the 5.0 month DUC well backlog of a month ago, and the lowest backlog since December 2014, despite a completion rate that is still more than 20% below 2019's pre-pandemic average...
once again, both oil producing regions and natural gas producing regions saw DUC well decreases in February, while none of the major basins covered by this report reported a DUC well increase....the number of uncompleted wells remaining in the Permian basin of west Texas and New Mexico decreased by 86, from 1,482 DUC wells at the end of January to 1,396 DUCs at the end of February, as 343 new wells were drilled into the Permian basin during January, while 429 wells in the region were being fracked...meanwhile, DUCs in the Eagle Ford shale of south Texas decreased by 19, from 683 DUC wells at the end of January to a record low of 664 DUCs at the end of February, as 81 wells were drilled in the Eagle Ford during February, while 100 already drilled Eagle Ford wells were completed....in addition, DUC wells in the Niobrara chalk of the Rockies' front range decreased by 14, falling from 343 at the end of January to a record low of 329 DUC wells at the end of February, as 89 wells were drilled into the Niobrara chalk during February, while 103 Niobrara wells were being fracked....at the same time, there was also a decrease of 13 DUC wells in the Bakken of North Dakota, where DUC wells fell from 436 at the end of January to a record low of 423 DUCs at the end of February, as 62 wells were drilled into the Bakken during February, while 75 of the drilled wells in the Bakken were being fracked....meanwhile, the number of uncompleted wells remaining in Oklahoma's Anadarko basin decreased by 10, falling from 773 at the end of January to 761 DUC wells at the end of February, as 57 wells were drilled into the Anadarko basin during February, while 67 Anadarko wells were completed.....
among the natural gas producing regions, the drilled but uncompleted well count in the Appalachian region, which includes the Utica shale, fell by 14 wells, from 457 DUCs at the end of January to a record low of 443 DUCs at the end of February, as 84 wells were drilled into the Marcellus and Utica shales during the month, while 98 of the already drilled wells in the region were fracked....meanwhile, the uncompleted well inventory in the natural gas producing Haynesville shale of the northern Louisiana-Texas border region remained unchanged at 369 DUCs, as 59 wells were drilled into the Haynesville during February, while 59 of the already drilled Haynesville wells were fracked during the same period....thus, for the month of February, DUCs in the five major oil-producing basins tracked by this report (ie., the Anadarko, Bakken, Niobrara, Permian, and Eagle Ford) decreased by a total of 142 wells to 3,560 DUC wells, while the uncompleted well count in the major natural gas basins (the Marcellus, the Utica, and the Haynesville) decreased by 14 wells to 812 wells, although as this report notes, once into production, more than half the wells drilled nationally will produce both oil and gas...
++
++
++
NB: there’s more here…
gi+crying.jpg)
+yi+sun+shin.jpg)
